Free speech is more than a great idea, it's a fundamental freedom untouchable by legislators. But all it takes is a few Muslim murders-- and Reid, Breyer and Graham eagerly hold up their lighters to the Constitution. Free speech has been curtailed before in the United States during a time of war-- but only free speech sympathetic to the enemy. During WW1 a suspected German propagandist filmmaker was jailed. But could anyone have imagined anti-German propagandists being jailed? The Wilson administration was behaving unconstitutionally, but not insanely.

Today we aren't jailing filmmakers who traffic in anti-American propaganda in wartime. If we did that half of Hollywood would be behind bars. Instead Democratic and Republican Senators are discussing banning speech offensive to the enemy. Because even though they're killing us already-- we had better not provoke them or who knows how much worse it will become.

Traditionally it's the victors who give their laws to the defeated. But massive immigration at home and nation building occupations abroad mean that the defeated of failed states are imposing their Sharia law on us. We're asked to trade in our Constitutional freedoms out of fear of Muslim violence. And so the murderers impose the terms of peace on us. And then don't abide by them.

Violence in the Muslim world is a constant. We have been fighting Muslim violence since George Washington's time. And we have been subject to it even longer. Whether it's Muslims killing Hindus, Christians, Jews, Zoroastrians or any and every religion under the sun-- there is a pattern here. It's a story as old as time. And it's not one that we can stop by ladling out honeyed words of appeasement.

Senator Graham warns us to shut up in a time of war-- but is there any foreseeable future in which we won't be fighting in a Muslim country? Democrats elected the most anti-war candidate of the bunch only to see him begin his 2012 reelection campaign by bombing another Muslim country. And what's surprising about that. Most of the trouble spots in the world that directly or indirectly affect us are located in Muslim countries. The major threat to the United States comes from the Muslim world. And that means we're going to be tied up dealing with the Muslim world in one way or another, whether as soldiers, diplomats or aid workers. And even if we weren't-- there are hundreds of thousands of Americans still living and working in Muslim countries. Hostages to the latest Muslim temper tantrum.

As Muslim terror has gotten worse, we have started treating the Muslim world like a ticking bomb-- tiptoeing around them to avoid setting them off. Whatever they don't like about us, we're willing to change. The paradigm of the angry dog or the ticking bomb means that we're damned if we do and damned if we don't. Whatever you do, the dog mauls you and the bomb blows up. But by pretending that you control the situation, you can feel better about your role in the outcome.

When a man teases a dog on the other side of a chain link fence-- we blame the man for provoking the dog, not the dog for being provoked. Animals have less of everything that makes for accountability. And so don't hold them accountable. Instead we divide them into categories of dangerous and harmless, and treat them accordingly.

Our response to Muslim violence in Afghanistan, supposedly touched off by a Koran burning in Florida, uses that same canine logic. The Muslims are dangerous and violent, so whoever provokes them is held accountable for what they do. Don't tease a doberman on the other side of a chain link fence and don't tease Muslims on the other side of the border or the world. That's the takeaway from our elected and unelected officials.

But the Muslim rioters are not dogs, they are human beings whose moral responsibility is being denied by treating their violence as a reflexive act. Their violence is not unconscious or instinctual-- it emerges out of a decision making process. There is nothing inevitable about what happened in Afghanistan. If Muslims had some sort of hair trigger, then why was the violent rioting confined to a very specific part of the world. For the same reason that the reaction to the Mohammed cartoons took so long. And why was it directed at the UN and not the US. The Koran burning was not the cause of Muslim violence-- but a rationalization for existing violence that would have occurred anyway for reasons having nothing to do with Terry Jones. And by treating Muslims like the 'Morally Handicapped' who have no choice but to kill when something offends them, we are not doing any favors for them or us.

It is far more insulting to treat Muslims as if they have no ability to control themselves and have no responsibility for their actions-- than it is to burn their Koran. That is an assessment that even many Muslims would agree with.

To blame Jones for their actions, we must either treat murder as a reasonable response to the burning of a book, or grant that Jones has a higher level of moral responsibility than the rioters do. There are few non-Muslims who could defend the notion that burning the Koran is a provocation that justifies bloodshed. And virtually no liberal would openly concede that he believes Muslims are morally handicapped-- but then why does he treat them that way?

If a Christian had torched a mosque in response to the Muslim arson of churches in Africa-- is there any liberal columnist or pundit who would have directed the lion's share of the blame at the original Muslim arsonists? No. The mosque burning would be treated as an independent act with no linkage to the church arsons. That is the attitude of Western jurisprudence which does not allow one crime to justify another, let alone one provocation to justify a crime. Individuals are treated as responsible moral actors-- not shooting balls in a pinball machine. Why then does this standard fly out the window when it comes to Muslims? Why does the press so easily sink into the rhetoric of 'retaliation and 'provocation', treating Muslim terrorism as a reflex, rather than a chosen act.

Is it not because for all their fanciful prose about the Religion of Peace, they do indeed see Muslims as dogs on the other side of a chain link fence. "Don't tease the dog, son, and it won't hurt you."

Liberalism begins as condescension toward lower class violence and culminates in complicity with it. Class warfare treated the poor as less morally responsible than the rich because of their deprivation and persecution. By treating physical deprivation as equivalent to moral deprivation, they became guilty of a far worse prejudice than those they were combating. They had declared that the poor were subhuman. When class warfare gave way to race warfare, they repeated the same ugly trick, romanticizing the Black Panthers and empowering thugs and rioters who destroyed black and white communities. The discriminated against were not bound by the same moral code as the discriminators. Their violence was 'purer' because it was a reflex against their conditions that they could not control. And so liberals who lectured ceaselessly about racism, were treating minorities as less than human.

Now in the age of Globalism-- Muslims are the new oppressed, exempted from the norms of civilized society. The morally handicapped who cannot be expected to turn the other cheek, the way we're supposed to.

But Muslims are not morally disabled-- they are immorally enabled. Muslim violence is a choice. Their choice. It is not a reflex or a reaction or a pinball bouncing off the cycle of violence. It is not something that we are responsible for. It is something that they and only they are responsible for. By pretending otherwise, we are immorally enabling them. Treating them like mad dogs or ticking time bombs just guarantees that they will play their part and fulfill our expectations by mauling or exploding.

We have never held Muslims morally accountable for anything they do. Not as a religion or as countries or individuals. Instead we pretend that Osama bin Laden or Saddam Hussein or Gaddafi are the problem. A handful of extremists and a few bad leaders somewhere. Not the people themselves. Never them.

Instead we have treated Muslims as the morally handicapped, too morally feeble to understand that violence is not the answer to everything from your daughter sneaking out with a boy to a pastor torching the Koran for a BBQ. And they have reacted exactly as people do when they know they will not be held accountable for their actions.

Treating someone as dangerous gives them power over you. They will test that power and then use it. Allowing yourself to be intimidated is the first step to being defeated. For many it is also the last step. We treated Muslims as dangerous and then we insist loudly that we love them very much and aren't afraid of them at all. Guess who we're fooling? Only ourselves. Every time there's a terror alert or American politicians talk about the wonders of the Koran-- the Muslim world sees it as evidence of their power over us. And when a Koran is burned, that just means we need further intimidating. It's a cycle of violence, but we're not the ones driving it except through our appeasement.

Muslims have stifled their own moral development-- but we haven't helped either. And the only way we can do that is to push them toward a moral reckoning. Instead we have bought into their genocidal narrative, enabled their violence and empowered the murderous aspects of their ideology. It's time that stopped. Lies and flattery will not prevent the violence. Only the confrontation of truth can force a moral reckoning.

Senator Graham wishes there was a way to hold Koran burners accountable for violence carried out by Koran readers, but what we really need is a way to hold Koran believers accountable for their own violence.

Exactly! But it doesn't come as a suprise in the least. I knew the US was heading in this direction when the president changed Operation Infinite Justice to Operation Freedom because it was offensive to Muslim.

I'm not into burning books, but I can't believe an American is being held reasonible for the violence in a Muslim country worlds away.

The canine analogy is excellent here as it brilliantly exposes the hypocrisy of the 'liberal' position.

However, you say, unlike wild dogs, "..Muslims are not morally disabled ... Muslim violence is a choice."

But, 1400 years of indoctrination means that many Muslims really are conditioned to violencelike wild dogs. Bearing in mind how immense and strategic was the Allies' de-nazification programme in West Germany after WW2 (which was required after just 10 years of Nazi indoctrination)it would take at least two generations of massive de-Islamisation across the whole Muslim world to muzzle them.

Great commentary, but I have one reservation. Daniel wrote: "Muslims have stifled their own moral development-- but we haven't helped either. And the only way we can do that is to push them toward a moral reckoning."

A "moral reckoning" that mattered would be the repudiation of Islam by Muslims. But then they would no longer be Muslims. This would entail recognizing the utter immorality of Islam, of grasping and acknowledging the "creed" (actually an ideology) as a death-worshipping cult, and that there is no reconciliation possible between reason and Islam. No reformation of it is possible, either. Any kind of "elective surgery" on Islam would kill it, and it would no longer be Islam.

Sure, there are a handful Muslims in the West who claim that Islam must be "reformed." How? Remove Sharia; remove all of Mohammad's homicidal, bigoted, and tyrannical diktats, and what would be left? An eclectic collection of theological and behavioral contentions that may as well be Amish. What would be left would not be Islam.

One that I believe this reaction is akin to is that of the battered wife. Worrying and fretting every single minute of every day that she might do something that justifies another rage-filled beating.

Whereas she worries about asking the wrong question; saying the wrong thing; wearing the wrong clothes; looking at another guy; burning/spoiling dinner, our brave Marxist elites preoccupy themselves with stamping out anything that might offend the Paedophile Prophet's army in any way so as not to give them a justifiable reason to murder infidels.

Rank cowardice. And these gutless dhimmis will destroy the West.

And am I correct in thinking that Jones didn't go ahead with the burning?

Contained in the words of this one article is more truth and common sense than in the pages of every newspaper that could have possibly been printed in this country today. So much in fact that the pressure is causing truth to ooze from the seams and drip to other locations. The real shame is most people will not un-lazy ass themselves long enough to read it lest it use the brain cell they were holding open for AI or DWTS. And many with plenty of brain cells to spare are either too cowardly or too invested in failed ideology to recognize the truth when it is bitch-slapping them daily.

My sorry, cheesy, self-absorbed congress weasel sent me a robo email extolling his "accomplishments of appeasement". "What a maroon" to quote the great Bugs Bunny. He is so woefully unaware of how late to the party he is. I will no longer suffer fools, including him. I will teach my children right and wrong, continue to vote out of respect for those 19 year old kids who died on beaches half a world away, and exercise my God given rights no matter what. I am starting to think it will take a cataclysmic socio-political event now to untangle the knot.

Mr. Greenfield you are one of the most insightful and wise authors and I enjoy reading your work. Donation forthcoming, I wish it could be more.

By killing westerners indiscriminately for the acts of one individual, they show their collectivist mindset. We need to treat them as individuals, holding each of them responsible for their personal action. forget that they are muslim and treat killers as killers.

One should be aware that Muslims don't need to be provoked but conjure out of thin air excuses to intimidate.The Danish cartoon "provocation" took months before the violence started. Here is Muslim violencehttp://www.heraldsun.com.au/ipad/killed-in-suicide-attacks/story-fn6s850w-1226033004816The bombers struck outside the shrine of the 13th century Sufi saint Ahmed Sultan, popularly known as Sakhi Sarwar, in Punjab province.See no burning of books necessary.When voters start confronting their representatives for crass statements then a start will have been made.

Am I crazy or are you all missing the point. We all know the problems with Islam and where Islam wants to take the world. The point here is US members of Congress and the Senate on both sides have lost their direction and no long hold the constitution to be the rule of the land.When law makers do not know or respect the constitution that they took an oath to defend; the county is in really bigger trouble then most realize. If this is not correct very fast I fear all will be lost.

Mosque Makeovers With Your Tax DollarsNovember 12, 2010WASHINGTON, D.C -- A Channel 2 Action News investigation found that the State Department is sending millions of dollars to save mosques overseas. This investment has received criticism as the United States makes an effort to slash nearly $4 trillion in government spending.... Darwish said that most of the mosques in Egypt are run by extremists who have ordered former Muslims like herself to be killed.http://www.wsbtv.com/news/25762604/detail.html

cnsnews: During the 1990s, Danny Nalliah, a Sri Lankan-born pastor spent two years in Saudi Arabia. "It's a well-known fact that if you have a Bible when you enter the airport, if they find the Bible, the Bible is taken and put in the shredder,"

"If you have more than one Bible you will be taken into custody, and if you have a quantity of Bibles you will be given 70 lashes for sure - you could even be executed."http://www.cnsnews.com/node/16594

Whilst Americans are forced into submission to Islam by paying for mosques with their taxes:

meforum.orgMuslim Jihad in Christian EthiopiaLessons for the West

Thousands of Christians have been forced to flee their homes in Western Ethiopia after Muslim extremists set fire to roughly 50 churches and dozens of Christian homes. Most attacks go either unreported or underreported......Besheno where, on November 9, all the Christians in the city woke up to find notes on their doors warning them to convert to Islam, leave the city or face death.

Bibles suffer in the Islamic world, where they are routinely confiscated and burned.

A 2003 fatwa ruled the Bible suitable for use by Muslims when cleaning after defecation. http://www.meforum.org/2867/jihad-ethiopia-christians

In a stunning act of bipartisan moral cowardice, Harry Reid told the world that he’s considering a “probe” into the Florida pastor who burned a copy of the Koran, while Lindsey Graham announced his belief that Americans should give up their First Amendment rights to avoid offending Muslims. The irony that this shameful display happened on a show called “Face the Nation” was lost on the spineless appeasers who lack the dignity to feel ashamed when surrendering to barbarians thousands of miles away. In the wake of savages rioting in Afghanistan, two of our senior lawmakers are advocating the implementation of Shariah-like laws to protect one religious document above all others.

And what would we get in return? The “good will” of the Muslim street? The same “good will” displayed when Palestinians–who live off U.S. aid–danced in the streets after 9/11?

The European countries that have kowtowed to these barbarians for decades have experienced the “good will” of the Muslim street through the brutal gang rape epidemic in Northern Europe and the out of control Muslim dominated child sex trafficking rings in England. Is this the “good will” we will receive when we abandon our Western values of liberty and free thought at the behest of a corrupt Afghan politician who is stoking anti-American violence?

The pusillanimity of the Left in the face of Islamic imperialism is almost understandable. The feckless, morally bankrupt European Left has long traded their children’s future for their own comfort, safety and petty Marxist hatreds. For the American Left, their pathological hatred of the West trumps their own hollow rhetoric about freedom. To see people on the Right, even “moderates” like Lindsey Graham, promoting the punishment of those who offend the uncivilized sensibilities of the Muslim street is is more than disgusting. Our leaders, the media, and a significant number of Americans do not understand the threat of Jihad, Islamic Imperialism and the internal drive unreformed Islam has toward world domination.

Pastor Terry Jones did not, as Time‘s Joe Klein suggests, cause the Koran riots. Islam did. During Friday sermons, Imams told their sheep-like congregations to murder people. These Islamic scholars rallied Muslims to violence. There are reports that Islamic leaders toured cities in cars with loud speakers telling fellow Muslims to riot. How can any rational person see this evil, this madness and conclude that it is we who must conform to their standards?

Klein finishes his piece with this disgusting bit of hyperbole:

Jones’s act was murderous as any suicide bomber’s. If there is a hell, he’s just guaranteed himself an afterlifetime membership.Burning a book he owned is as murderous as blowing up innocent people? Is this what the West has become?

Well said. One of the primary benefits I get from reading your columns is the articulation of things that I feel, but my thoughts are not fully developed and rounded out in a logical way that connects all the fragments of the topic that I have been exposed to or thinking.

The main problem are the Madrassah's funded by the Saudis spreading Salafi Islam. Because of these, the Muslim have become more conservative and therefore more open to terrorism. See more on my blog: http://philippspolitics.blogspot.com

There is a well known phrase, attributed to Heinrich Heine: "... where they burn books, they will ultimately burn people also."

That said, burning a Koran shows an act of bravery and defiance against those criminals who are quick and ready to use Western's tried and true principles of freedom of speech, thought and expression to undermine those very same principles.

The Koran is but the (somewhat outdated by a few centuries) constitution of a misogynistic, prejudiced and criminal totalitarian ideology disguised as a religion that diminishes, deprives and degrades the few hundreds of millions of misguided people who follow it blindly and sheepishly. It's basically at the same intelectual level as Mein Kampf and the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, with some extra clauses here and there on the life of a pedophile thief and murderer who nobody would want as a raw model for their children, unless you happen to be a mental cripple.

So while burning a book, as filthy as that book may be, is not the greatest of ideas, the act in itself should send a clear signal to the world's muslim animals that either they start getting their act together and coming to terms with the fact that their beliefs are no more and no less on the same level as anybody else's beliefs, or else their discriminatory, barbaric and violent ideology will have to be expunged from the civilized world. Just like Nazism was expunged from the world when its ugliness sank the world into one of the most terrible human-caused disasters it has ever known.

I believe the pastor who burned the Koran is courageous. The Koran IS on a level with Hitler's Mein Kampf. The Koran-burning will hopefully entice people to open the Koran and read it. ACT for America is planning an upcoming "Open the Koran" day... they believe that rather than burn the Koran, people should open it and READ it! Once people read it... and understand the principal of abrogation in the Koran (that verses written earlier are abrogated/negated by later verses) and realize how the Koran is put together (longer verses before shorter ones)... AND that they need to read the entire trilogy of books to understand Islam (NOT just the Koran).... and once they read all the hatred and commands to murder... they will understand why this pastor put the Koran on trial, found it guilty of crimes against humanity, and decided to burn the disgusting book. He is truly a courageous soul and I thank him for what he is doing for America, and for the world.

"As I have often written, the liberal order articulates the world through a "script" in which there are three characters: the white liberal, who embodies the non-discriminatory virtue of the liberal regime; the white non-liberal, who discriminates against nonwhites and who must be crushed by the white liberal; and the nonwhite/non-Westerner, who either is discriminated against by the white non-liberal or is non-discriminatorily included by the white liberal. In the script, furthermore, only the white liberal and the white non-liberal are moral actors, with the first representing good and the second representing evil. The nonwhite/non-Westerner is not a moral actor, but is simply the passive recipient of the white liberal's goodness or of the white non-liberal's bigotry. The reason that the nonwhite/non-Westerner cannot be a moral actor is that his very function in the script is to be the recipient of either good non-discrimination or evil discrimination. If he were a moral actor, then his own actions would have to be judged; specifically, his bad actions would have to be judged. But to judge his bad actions would be to discriminate against him. And since the central purpose of liberalism is to eliminate all discriminatory treatment of nonwhites/non-Westerners, moral judgement of nonwhites/non-Westerners must also be eliminated. Therefore nonwhites/non-Westerners cannot be seen as responsible moral actors.

The liberal script explains why Jones, who burned a piece of paper with ink on it, has "blood on his hands," but the Muslim Afghan mob that invaded a UN compound and murdered 12 UN employees do not have blood on their hands. The Muslims are not moral actors. The Muslims are simply the victims of Terry Jones's discriminatory act against them. Jones, the white non-liberal, is a moral agent who is responsible for his evil actions. The Muslims are not moral agents and are not responsible for their actions."